“So soft.” Grazing her nipple with his teeth, Dev rose to look down at her.
She felt an absolute creature of the senses at that moment, flushed and without inhibitions. Reaching up, she went to caress him, but he stopped her hands. “It’s my turn, remember?” And the wicked glint in his eye was the only warning she had before he began to kiss his way downward. She tried to grab at his shoulders, but he simply chuckled and kept going.
His kiss was hot, dark, wicked.
It was all she could do not to sob from the pleasure of it. Clutching at the sheets with desperate hands, she made no protest when he spread her thighs even farther and settled in to taste her as if she were some exotic banquet, and he a connoisseur.
“Shh.” Strong hands stroked her down as he laved kisses on the delicate skin of her inner thighs.
But just as she’d almost gotten her breath back, he kissed her with that same devastating intimacy a second time, the tenderness of his touch doing nothing to hide the possessiveness. Part of her was convinced he knew she’d decided to leave him, but that thought was less than a flicker in the back of her mind. Right now, the endorphins flooding her body left no room for anything but pleasure.
Slow, seductive, sizzling.
A single lick and it was too much. She twisted away, desperate to escape . . . yet wanting more at the same time. “Dev.”
Holding her hips in place, he pressed his lips to her navel. “Trust me.”
She trusted him more than she’d ever trusted any other being. “I need you.” It was a dangerous confession, but she had no barriers left.
His hands tightened on her, and then he was moving over her body in a molten wave of kisses, touch and pure heat. She found her lips taken again, even as he reached between them to free himself, shoving his clothing down just enough. It was still too slow—she was rubbing herself against him by then, hungry, so desperately hungry.
“Katya, baby, stop.” It was a groan. “I can’t hold on if you do that.”
She raised her lips to his again, infusing her kiss with every ounce of passion in her. Shuddering, Dev gripped her hard on one hip. “I sure hope you’re ready, sweetheart.”
“Yes, yes!” Crying out as her body stretched around the hard thrust of his entry, she wrapped both legs around his waist. And then she let him lead.
He took her on a ride that eclipsed anything they’d ever before done. Wild, untamed, and vividly physical, they danced. The last thing Katya remembered was seeing Dev’s eyes shimmer gold.
CHAPTER 46
“Shower,” Dev said, all but carrying her to the bathroom.
“Later.”
He pressed a kiss to her shoulder. “We’re both sweaty—and I need to get some work done.”
Holding on to him, she let him turn on the shower. The warm spray washed off the sweat of their lovemaking, and that was all they were capable of then. Dragging her out of the bathroom, Dev rubbed her down before doing the same to himself, while she tried to keep herself upright.
Just when her legs threatened to go out from under her, he dropped the towel and grabbed her. “We do that again,” Dev muttered, “and I might not live to tell the tale.”
Nuzzling her smiling face into the damp heat of his neck, she let him carry her to bed, lay her down on the tumbled sheets. “I’m so sleepy.”
“Yeah, might be a good idea to catch an hour’s shut-eye,” he said with a yawn. “We didn’t get much more than three hours last night.”
As he pulled the blanket over them, her lashes fluttered down. Body sated and wrung out, she tried to remember what she had to do. Leave. Yes, she had to do that.
But then Dev put an arm around her waist and pulled her close, and she surrendered to the selfishness in her that wanted another moment, another minute, another hour with him. I’ll go once he falls asleep, she promised herself, never realizing that she was sliding into the same dreamless void herself.
Dev felt Katya leave the bed, his senses coming half-awake as he waited for her to return from the bathroom. It took him too long to realize he couldn’t hear the tap running, any sounds at all. “Katya?”
He opened his eyes just in time to see her run into the room, the light from the setting sun dancing off the deadly blade in her hand. Snapping to full alertness as she lifted the murderous blade high above her head, he went to roll away, but something stopped him. The angle of the knife, it was wrong—“Katya!”
Blood spurted as she thrust the knife into her own thigh, crashing to the floor with a shattered cry of pain.